Bolt, Beranek and Newman

During the development of ARPANET, Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) was hired to work out the details of communication over the Internet.

BBN's original focus was acoustic research. However, as BBN began buying more and more powerful computers to do their acoustics work, they gradually became a software company.

ARPA contracted BBN to work out the details of ARPANET. BBN technicians built the first routers and developed the TCP/IP protocol.